Hot and Cold Media- Week 2

When we think of our world our mind can be limited of the barrier around us. Some may think large and see the whole universe, where some may only see the community around us being our instant surroundings. Somehow we are all connected and a lot of the time its by media or technology. McLuhan (2000) explains, “The global village we live in that has been shrunk by modern advances in communications”. The world can be seen as a single community, which is linked by telecommunications, which we can now associate with media. Media is now something we are exposed to everyday whether it is on the radio, a billboard, television, and newspaper or even in conversation. Many businesses have to make the decisions each day to engage with their target publics to become success by using certain tools and tactics embracing media whether it be hot or cold media. The reality of media in this day and age is they don’t just put it out there for fun its put out there for a reason. It is there to have an impact on the viewer and has an underlining meaning to the target public for different reasons. McLuhan (2015) explains, “Hot media is the state of being well filled with data”. The term spoon-fed arises frequently that we have the information handed to us and we sift through that information by a level of importance the person giving the information feels necessary. Hot media engages only one sense of the user to an extent as a lot of their attention is focused on the content being provided in front of them they have minimal participation this is evident with examples of hot media such as a photograph, radio, film or a book. Hot medium is one that extends one single sense in “high definition” and just the opposite is true of cold media, which is seen as a telephone, a speech, television or a cartoon. Cold media has a low definition because the consumer’s ear is given a meager amount of information rather than the eye. This allows for a great demand of interaction and participation from the audience but it allows for them to feel involved as they see the gaps and want to fill those gaps themselves. Reading about this theory allowed me to think how much communication controls so much and how media has adapted from being one-way communication to engaging prospects of conversations locally and globally. With technology changing every day it just demonstrates the obvious of how the media will constantly develop and grow to control more and more of our everyday life even if we’re not fully aware of it happening.

References:

Stewart, W 2000, ‘Marshall McLuhan Foresees The Global Village’, The Living Internet, retrieved 25 August 2015, http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_mcluhan.htm Mediated Cultures, 2015, ‘The world wide web as a ‘cold’ medium and the ‘practice’ of YouTube’,

Mediated Cultures, retrieved 25 August 2015, http://mediatedcultures.net/the-youtube-project/the-world-wide-web-as-a-cold-medium-and-the-practice-of-youtube/comment-page-1/